Tankbread 02 Immortal (27 page)

When the battle ended, Else spat the taste of black blood from her mouth. The woman who fell in front of her had been devoured; her remains now twitched as the Adam virus tried to articulate her ruined limbs. Else stomped her booted foot into the woman’s forehead, crushing her skull.

When the fighting finished, over a hundred evols lay crushed and broken on the ground. Five of the 27 survivors were also dead, three of them having been executed to save them from the effects of zombie bites. Cassie, Eric, Rache, Hob, Anna, Michael, and Sam, all stood looking stunned and shaken by the ferocity of the fight.

“Load up the vehicles,” Else said. “We keep moving.” She walked back to the SUV, Eric hurrying after her.

“We’ve got maybe two hundred miles of fuel left. What happens after that?”

“We find more fuel, or we start walking.” Else opened the door and lifted the crying baby out of the front seat. Cuddling him against her chest, she stroked his back and stared at Eric.

“And if we don’t find more fuel? I’ll tell you what happens,” Eric continued. “We all die.”

“I won’t die. My son won’t die.”

“That’s all you fucking care about, isn’t it? You and the fuckin’ kid.”

Else’s gun came up with the hammer sliding into a cocked position as the muzzle pressed against Eric’s forehead.

“What else do I have?” she asked.

Eric swallowed hard. “You got all of us. You love the kid, sure I get that. But you brought the rest of us off the ship with you. We’re your responsibility now.”

“I didn’t ask you to come with me,” Else said.

“You made me blow up the fuckin’ ship,” Eric reminded her.

“Doesn’t mean I have to protect you all.”

“You’re damn right it does. Each one of those people, they are looking to you to get us somewhere safe.”

“Tell them to look at Rache. She’s the one who wants to lead.”

“She is leadin’, but she’s doin’ it with one eye on you to make sure she’s doing it right.”

Else held his gaze for a several long breaths and then the gun angled upwards, the hammer clicking to a safe position. “Get everyone on board.” She climbed into the front seat of the SUV and fed her son.

The convoy drove south on the Lynd Highway in silence, Eric scowling into the growing light of dawn. Else studied the countryside. The thicker bush of the north was thinning now to dry scrubland. The offspring of surviving stock could be seen moving in flocks and herds, always away from the road and the noise of the vehicles. They had to stop once when a mob of kangaroos exploded out of the bush and thundered across the road in front of them. Rifle shots rang out from the larger truck, and two of the animals skidded across the road, twitched, and lay still.

Else remained in the SUV while Michael and Sam supervised the butchering of the ’roos. The boys were skilled with knives, another lesson learned on the farm from their father. The skins and the meat were loaded onto the truck and in less than an hour the convoy was rolling again. Soon they drove through the ruins of another small town where dogs ran barking after the vehicles, but they saw no sign of the living or the dead in the roadside properties.

More abandoned towns flashed past, some with barricades and warning shots, one of which shattered the windscreen on the smaller truck and killed a young woman of the fishermen called Sal. They kept driving, Else refusing to let anyone stop and engage in a gunfight with an enemy of unknown strength.

They stopped at each roadside petrol station and checked the storage tanks for diesel fuel. They all came up dry.

After a week on the road, the heavy truck sputtered to a halt. The other two vehicles pulled over and they measured out the remaining fuel in all three.

“How far?” Rache asked.

“We’ve come, eighteen hundred kilometers, nearly eleven hundred miles.” Else said, poring over the paper map. “Eric, how much fuel do we have left?”

“Maybe two hundred miles.”

“Not close enough,” Else said. “It’s more like three fifty, three sixty to get to our destination.”

“Well let’s not fuck about then.” Eric leaned out the window. “Mount up, we’ve got miles to go!” he yelled to the other two vehicles.

The survivors stretching their legs scrambled back up onto the open decks of the two trucks. They rolled on, moving so much slower than Else would have liked, but the highways were breaking down and in places the road had been washed out.

“What state are we in?” Rache asked, peering over from the backseat at the map in Else’s lap.

“New South Wales,” Else replied.

“Where’s Mildura?”

“Here,” Else’s finger stroked a point on the map.

“It’s so close.” Rache sounded disappointed. “We should be able to see it from here.

“Heads up,” Eric said.

Else folded the map, looking out through the dusty windscreen. In the distance a lone figure stood on the edge of the road next to a bus laying on its side, a faded white cloth waving over his head.

The SUV stopped, the trucks parking angled left and right behind the four-wheel drive. Armed survivors jumped down from the trucks and scattered to the edge of the road. They had picked up the tactics quickly and with minimal training.

The man walked towards them, hands raised high, the white cloth stretched between them, fluttering in the light breeze. As he came closer they could see his gaunt frame and long hair. His clothes were faded by the elements and he wore a long coat.

Rache slipped out of the SUV and called out, “Are you alone?”

“What?” the man called back.

“Are. You. Alone?!”

“Yes!” the man yelled back, his eyes flicking to the wrecked bus on the side of the road.

Else narrowed her eyes. “He’s lying,” she said to Rache through the open window.

“Uh-huh,” Rache replied. “Walk forward, and keep your hands up!” she shouted. The man started walking towards the SUV.

“Thank you for stopping,” he called as he got closer. “I haven’t seen any live people for weeks.”

“Where were you headed?” Rache asked.

“Melbourne. I heard there’s a sanctuary there. A Japanese supply ship came in. They have medical supplies and a cure for the dead.”

A murmur ran through the group. Hope, as always, was open to suggestions.

“Bullshit,” Else said.

“How do you know this is true?” Rache asked.

The man lowered his hands as he turned to look southward, his face wracked with confusion. “I . . . I was told, by a woman who said she had been told by someone who had seen the ship.”

“When was that?” Else asked Rache.

“When was that?” Rache called across the distance between them and the man.

“I . . . I dunno. A month? Three months ago?”

“Tell the people behind the bus to come out,” Else said.

“The people behind the bus have to come out,” Rache called.

The man hesitated. “There’s no one—”

“They come out or you die!” Rache shouted.

“They’re just kids,” the man said.

Else opened the door of the SUV. Her baby lay asleep in the back, between Cassie and Lowanna. Standing behind the door, Else drew her revolver.

“Everyone, out in the open now!” she aimed her pistol at the gaunt man.

“Okay! Okay! Jesus, chill the fuck out . . .” The man turned back to the bus and whistled. They came in ones and twos, filthy, wide eyed, and dressed in scavenged clothes with little understanding of size or fashion. Seven children, and none of them could have been more than ten years old.

“Where did they come from?” Else called.

“There was a settlement, over on the coast. They were in danger of being overrun. They asked me to take the kids and head to Melbourne.”

“What happened to the bus?” Rache called.

“I fell asleep at the wheel and crashed.” The gaunt man looked embarrassed at the admission.

“Are you messing with these kids?” Rache demanded.

“What? No! Jesus, I’m just trying to help.”

“We cut the cock and balls off the last guy who messed with a young girl,” Rache warned.

“Good for you,” he replied.

“What is your name?” Else asked.

“Godfrey, Alan Godfrey,” the gaunt man replied.

“I’m Else, this is Rache, the others can introduce themselves. Bring whatever supplies you have and find those kids some space on the trucks.”

“Thanks!” Alan herded the children towards the trucks. Rache and two survivors went and pillaged the bus, returning with food, water, and a bag filled with paper.

“Do you know what this is?” Rache asked Else.

“I think it’s money,” Else said.

“Yeah, that’s cash. Old world money. I wonder why they were carrying it?” Eric said.

“Maybe they thought it was still worth something,” Else said.

“Maybe.” Eric started the SUV and the convoy continued south.

The last of the fuel ran out on the edge of a town that by Else’s calculations was around 200 kilometers from their goal. At 120 miles, Mildura was a lot closer than they had expected.

“So now what? We load everyone up with what they can carry and start walking?” Eric didn’t look convinced. The sun was setting through a thin veil of cloud, giving the dry grassland all around them a sepia tone.

“We leave most of them here,” Else replied. “We take a few people and explore that town ahead.”

Turning from Eric, Else shouted out the window, “Rache, we need no more than five people. They should be armed and sensible.”

While Rache gathered her patrol, Else fed and then washed the baby with a damp cloth. “Cassie, can you look after him while I am gone?”

Cassie nodded. Lowanna was grizzling and kicking on the backseat. She took the baby boy and laid him down next to the girl.

“You want me to come with?” Eric asked, unclipping his seat belt.

“No, you stay here. Keep an eye on things while we are gone,” Else said.

“Sure. You know what to look out for, right?”

Else nodded and slid out of the SUV. The air was dry; the clouds to the west held no promise of rain.

Rache caught up with her on the road, five men with rifles, shotguns, and blades on her heels.

“We’re going to look for fuel, right?” one of the men asked.

“We’re looking for all kinds of things,” Else replied.

At the first town they came to, the outlying houses were ransacked. The ones that were boarded up had been torn open, gutted like a carcass and the scraps left to rot in the sun.

Deeper in town they moved more carefully. While there were no signs of life, evols drifted among the abandoned cars and looted shops.

The group spread out. Moving in pairs they opened shops and houses, searching the interiors for tinned food, medicine, and Eric’s shopping list of household chemicals and fertilizers.

As Else walked down the center of the main street, the evols slowly turned and focused on her. Moving closer they roused themselves, attracted by the beating of her heart and the whisper of her breathing. Else drew her blades, flexing her arms and waiting for the dead to come within range. Then in an explosion of movement, she cut them down, the sharpened steel of the scythe blades severing grey limbs and destroying necrotic brains.

More came shuffling onwards, slashing at her, the rags of their clothing hanging like their dried strips of torn skin. Else ran a man through with one blade, spilling his guts and tripping him as he walked. With the second blade she took his head, a wide swing shearing through his neck.

She killed them with a dancer’s grace, spinning and turning to an unheard symphony. The hands reaching for her had no sense of rhythm. She danced with the dead anyway, taking the lead and ending the existence of five in quick succession.

When the mob had been cut down, Else walked into a store. The place had once sold clothes, and what rats and moths hadn’t devoured lay under a thick cover of dust. Plastic wrapping cracked with age as Else sorted through the different items. The photographs of babies on the packets, some close to her son’s age, fascinated her. Unpacking one of the packets she examined baby clothes, tiny outfits for a newborn. Gathering a selection, she carried them across to where racks of women’s clothing hung. Else felt the texture of the dresses. She liked dresses; they were cooler in hot weather, and the swish of the fabric was nice against her skin. She could run and fight in a dress too. After making her selection from the brightly colored clothes that weren’t filled with moth holes, Else went to look behind the counter for something to carry it all in.

A dead woman on her hands and knees looked up at Else as she came around the counter. Blood dripped from the woman’s mouth; the severed head of a rat rolled in her mouth as she chewed on it.

Else dropped the clothes on the bench and with a smooth motion she pulled her pistol and fired once into the woman’s forehead. She had once been a larger figure, dressed in the kinds of loose dresses that Else liked. Now she was just a swollen sack, leaking rotting meat.